


the lightning in me

by republica



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-04 22:33:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/715834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/republica/pseuds/republica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lagertha can't help but find him interesting. </p><p>What leads up to "Come join us, priest."</p><p>(Focuses on Lagertha/Athelstan, but with all three of them)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the lightning in me

**Author's Note:**

> slaps out another mess of words
> 
> i know the timeline on this is wonky bc in the preview they're tryna get him in bed like 2 mins after they get back but in this it's longer also idk what ragnar's been up to but for the sake of my otp pretend it makes sense?
> 
> this is obviously just me making stuff up (but i based it a tiny bit on some previews i watched)

 

 

            When Ragnar returns, she doesn’t pretend that she hasn’t missed him; hasn’t spent the past weeks worrying and staring out at the road that leads home, hoping to see his tall figure making the way back to her. For despite knowing that he would be fine, of course he would be, what wife wouldn’t worry for her husband, on the open sea travelling into a great unknown?

            She wraps him in her arms and squeezes, and he laughs but understands, for he missed her too, his anchor and his equal. Weeks without her felt like weeks without his other half, some large portion of him left on a sandy beach miles away as he rowed endlessly through tossing seas.

            “Is this your way of saying you missed me?” He teases gently, when she’s let him go and holds him at arms length, critically looking him over for injury or ailment. She shoves him and he laughs, and strokes her cheek tenderly.

            Bjorn had run out of the house behind her, and Ragnar beckons to him, rustles his hair and that’s when he introduces the slave.

            Lagertha thinks he looks like a shy deer, flinching at loud noises, eyes wide and nervous as he looks back at them. They’ve never had a slave before, and this alone is enough to tell her that the raid was successful. Bjorn is staring befuddled at the man’s strange hair, and Lagertha can’t help but understand his confusion. Half his hair is bald, a ring of curly brown around the edge of his scalp.

            His name is Athelstan, he says in a quavery voice, glancing up at them through his lashes.

            “What’s wrong with your hair?” Bjorn bursts out, and Ragnar stifles a chuckle.

            The man is a priest of sorts, she decides, listening to him explain. He’s nothing like the Seer, with his shroud of mystery and preternatural gaze. What god might this man serve?

 

            “I found him interesting,” Ragnar admits later, when they are alone in bed, and she’s resting where she belongs against his side. One of his hands rubs circles into her side, and she’s perfectly content with this moment.

            “Mmm,” she agrees, “He is almost... cute. He has the look of a kicked puppy whenever I look at him.”

            “And do you look at him a lot?” Ragnar teases, fingers turning to tickles and she writhes.

            “Oh, hush,” she says, and he snorts a laugh.

 

But Lagertha finds that she does look at him more than she ought. He quickly assumes his place, and she finds with the help of another she has more time to look, and watch his movements.

            He speaks to himself a lot, she thinks, but it’s not in their language and she cannot understand it. As he’s cooking, he mutters, and as he helps her clean he almost sings, under his breath. It seems almost an unconscious behaviour, a ritual or habit that he can’t drop.

            “What is it you’re saying?” She finally asks him one day, as he sears fish in a pan over a fire.

            He glances up, and she’s once again reminded of a startled deer. He blinks from under his fringe. “Ah - I’ll stop.”

            “No,” she says, “I only asked what it was.”

            “Prayer. I’m praying,” he admits, looking put off guard by her questions. Whatever understanding has risen between them is not one of friendship. Lagertha hasn’t been harsh with him, and he hasn’t been overly surly towards her, but it is not a companionable relationship.

            “What does it mean?”

            “It’s - Latin, I don’t suppose that means anything. I’m praising God,” he says, and he shifts under her gaze, as though embarrassed.

            “You do this even though your god has made you a slave?”

            “He has a plan for each of us,” he says, but he doesn’t look into her eyes.

            Lagertha doesn’t know what to think about that sort of faith.

            The next time they are cooking, she starts to hum, a song she learned as a child, one of the great legends put to music. She’s never been much of a singer, but her voice is clear enough and she sings a few verses. Athelstan is silent, but from his stiff back she knows he is listening, trying to parse the meaning of the antiquated language.

            “That’s - you sing well,” he says when she falls silent. Lagertha laughs. “No, but it’s good of you to say so.”

            There’s another moment of silence, and then he says: “In the monastery where I lived, we sang every morning and every evening, for prayer. Matins and Vespers.”

            She repeats the words, the foreign sounds rough in her mouth.

            “Will you show me?”

            He looks surprised by her request.

            “ _Deus, in adiutorium meum intende... Domine, ad adiuvandum me festina....”_

            It’s more of a chant than a song. She doesn’t understand it, but his voice is deep and melodic and she can hear the feeling behind the words. He breaks off, looking even more embarrassed, and half shrugs. “With a hundred of us, it’s more impressive.”

            “What does it mean?”

            He says it asks for God’s help, and she nods. They don’t speak any more, but she is left with the feeling that maybe they are less strangers than they were.

           

            “Mama, tell us about Jormungand again, please,” Gyda begs late one night in front of the fire. Lagertha is braiding her hair into an intricate knot. Rain pounds at the roof and cold winds howl outside, even in summer. The storm has been raging all day, as if it knows that Ragnar is away, gone to plan some kind of strategy. He’s gone by boat this time, and she hopes desperately that he’d reached his meeting place before the waves started whipping and whirling in the fjord.

“Every time it storms, you want to hear about Jormungand,” Lagertha says. “Perhaps you want something new.”

“There are no new stories,” Bjorn says. “We’ve heard them all.”

“All of the stories in the whole world? Have you another mother who tells you these stories?”

Bjorn gives her one of his looks, and she raises an eyebrow at him, before nodding her head at Athelstan. “Why don’t you ask him for a story, hmm?”

Gyda’s eyes light up. She’s taken especial shine to the monk. “Please, Athelstan, tell us a story.”

                        Athelstan is gentler, more friendly with the children than he is with her or Ragnar. He looks at Bjorn and Gyda, then at her. “What kind of story do you want?”

                        Just then a massive clap of thunder shakes the sky, and the rain pounds harder than ever. Athelstan looks up, then a small smile crosses his face.

                        “Once, many many years ago, God looked down from the heavens and saw the world was full of wicked people. He decided to destroy the earth and remake it, to be perfect.”

                        “What god would do that? Was it Odinn?” Bjorn interrupts.

                        “Hush, let him tell the story,” Gyda shushes her brother.

                        “God sees that there is one man on the earth who is worth saving, a righteous man whom God entrusts with one task: to build an ark.”

                        “What’s an ark?”

                        The children are enraptured by this story of flood, and Lagertha wonders why the priest worships such a vengeful diety in such a servile manner.

 

                        She wakes from a dream, drenched in sweat and gasping. Her mind is full of his hands and his lips, on her and in her, and she shudders with lust at the memory. She can’t pretend she hasn’t seen this coming, from the days she’s spent watching him as he moves around their space, becoming as much a part of it as she or the children. She watches him, sees him blush when she catches his eye, sees his half averted eyes as she practices her sword and her staff, and she would find it almost endearing if it weren’t frustrating.

                       

                        “Ragnar told me there were no women on that island of yours,” she says to him one day. He’d been looking at her, again, in a way she supposes he thinks is subtle. He says nothing, shakes his head.

                        “Has a woman ever even touched you?” She moves closer, and his face turns bright pink. He still says nothing.

                        “Would you know what to do it one did?” She smiles, almost predatorily as she slinks even closer. He’s reminded of a graceful cat, stalking it’s prey. He swallows.

                        “Men of God do not -” His voice breaks and he clears his throat. “I’ve taken a vow. To remain - celibate.”

                        His foreign word means nothing to her, and she laughs. “None of the gods would deny us the pleasure.”

                        “Not - not pagan gods,” he says. “In my service to my God. I’ve made certain - sacrifices.”

                       “Where is your god now, priest?” Her tone turns mocking. “Has he sent his faithful servant off to fulfill his holy destiny, slaving over my fire?”

                        Athelstan is silent. She sees his hands shaking slightly. Her words clearly hit him somewhere deep.

                        “That’s what I thought,” Lagertha says softly. “You are alone.”

                        But her mind turns to Ragnar, gone again, for a longer stretch, journeying to a trading post in the east. She has been alone, too, for some time now. She can’t be mocking anymore.

                        If he didn’t know better, Athelstan might say she sounded … sad. He looks at the ground, curls his fingers into a fist.

                        “I’ve seen you,” she says. “Looking at me. You want me.”

                        He shakes his head.

                        “Don’t deny it. I want you, too.”

                        His head snaps up. She’s smirking at him from the other side of the fire. It lights up her face in warm angles and he hair glows gold, almost a halo.

                        She watches his face. She doesn’t think he’ll take her offer. Not yet, at least. Whatever he still clings to as part of his old life, even after months, is too strong.

                        “You’re with us, now,” she says, “What use it it to deny that, either?”

 

                        Ragnar comes back at dusk, two days later. He’s laden down with goods, rich and luxurious things, novelties from far off lands she’s never seen before. He drops them all to the ground to engulf her in his arms, and she feels the familiar aching. Athelstan is hovering by the door, and Ragnar nods to him as they walk past. Gyda and Bjorn are captivated by the goods, glassy amber beads he presents her with a flourish, along with a new dagger, it’s handle pure ivory. The summer months of raiding had paid of greater than any of them could have imagined, the evidence is clear before her now.

                        Ragnar bears her to bed roughly and they fuck like animals, wild and passionate, and she collapses against him again, smiling.

                        “Have you fucked the priest, yet?” He asks, and she laughs. Of course he can tell.

                        “He won’t touch me,” she sighs into his side.

                        “Clearly there is something wrong with him,” Ragnar states, and his hands drift lower and they pick back up their explosive rhythm.

                        The next day Athelstan won’t meet her eyes, and she wonders if he could make her scream like Ragnar had.

 

                        Lagertha’s dreams are full of them both, with her and together, and she feels no shame sharing this with Ragnar. He’s been gone for large portions of the past few months, and knows little about the monk besides what she tells him. She can see he isn’t averse to her thoughts. His head tips to the side as he considers it, his hands idly brushing up and down her arm.

                        She catches him looking at the priest more in the following weeks, as they establish their own shaky sort of balance. Ragnar trains in the garden, coincidentally at the same time that she sends Athelstan to hoe the vegetable patch. He comes back in, head bowed and cheeks tinged pink, and she smiles to herself.

                        When Ragnar kisses her, she sees his eyes on them and she deepens the kiss. He finds excuses to touch her in Athelstan’s presence. It’s a lure; they are ensnaring him in their trap, like the deer wandering too close to the pit. One shove and he’ll tumble over the edge into their waiting bed.

                       

                        And so it happens, on no particularly special evening. It’s raining again, and she sends the children to bed early. Athelstan sits a few feet from the fire, and she is next to Ragnar at the table.

                        There’s a charge between them, the kind she knows well. It sends sparks shooting down into her core and sets it on fire, and she quivers at Ragnar’s touch. He can feel her lust and he grins, slow and warm, and when she drags her foot up his leg he chokes back a gasp. She smirks back, then, and he stands, abruptly, and they’re off to the bedroom in seconds.

                        They’re naked when she decides to do it. “Come with me,” she tells him, draws his hand into hers and leads him out of the room, other hand clutching a blanket to her chest. Ragnar realises what’s going on, and his stance changes too, to one of anticipation, and she feels the heat burn even hotter in her belly.

                        He’s right where they left him, staring into the fire, back against one wall. She moves quietly, cool air sending goosebumps over her bare skin.

                        “Come join us, priest,” she says and he looks up, then back down quickly, as hesitant as always. Ragnar next to her is equally as eager.

                        For a minute, she thinks he might refuse. But then he looks back up, into her eyes, and he nods.

                        Lagertha smiles broadly, draws her hand over the blanket, inching it higher up over her thigh. Ragnar’s tugging her hand, back to their bed, urgent. She shoots Athelstan one last coy smile, and he gets to his feet to follow after them, looking excited and nervous and guilty all at once.

                        She’ll wipe all those emotions away, she decides, and replace them with only pleasure, until he can’t think about anything but her hands on him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> i feel lame filling up the vikings tag with a bunch of crap but i might make this a 3 parter, one for each one of them y/n?


End file.
